Nature and Art, March 1, 18C?.] 
REVIEWS. 
93 
which renders them like perambulating- bundles of old 
window-curtains ; none but women of the lowest class, and 
those generally old and ugly, being permitted to be seen 
abroad. Then, perhaps, he may meet a cavalier in a com- 
bination of snowy-white and gay or gorgeous garments, 
mounted on a saddle like those used in an English circus 
for the daring feats of horsemanship, on a white horse with 
his nose, hoofs, mane, and tail painted pink ; or a native 
conveyance resembling a gig with an awning, covered with 
bells and jingling ornaments. Rude carts, drawn by bullocks, 
will nearly block up the narrow thoroughfare, and the tout 
'ensemble of the scene will be completed by the creaking of 
the ungreased cart-wheels, the incessant beating of tom- 
toms, ringing of bells, and Babel of voices ; with odours of 
burnt wood, rancid oil, and stagnant ditches. The romances 
of the “ Arabian Nights’ Entertainments ” will be recalled 
to his mind, and afford him a glimpse of the inner life of 
this new world presented to his notice, and he may rejoice 
in being perfectly rid, for a time, of black hats and crino- 
line. 
Even if, however, he seeks the European habitations, he 
will still find much to astonish him. He will behold well- 
appointed English carriages driven by native coachmen in 
Eastern costumes ; and, up country, the European bunga- 
lows, with their high- thatched roofs, painted clay walls, and 
verandas are sufficiently characteristic. Indeed, existence 
would be impossible in such a climate without considerable 
modification of our English manner of life. At Meerut, for 
instance, which is a large station in the North-west pro- 
vinces of Bengal, at nearly a thousand miles’ distance from 
Calcutta, for eight months in the year the sun renders im- 
prisonment in the house compulsory from about seven in 
the morning till six in the evening. It is possible, certainly, 
to struggle through the scorching heat, with a pith hat, two 
or three inches thick, upon the head, and an umbrella ; 
and, under the influence of strong excitement, men have 
been known to brave the effects of the sun with impunity ; 
but confinement to the house must be the normal condition. 
Here, in the season of the hot winds, the air comes from 
the arid deserts of Caubul, like the blast of a coke-furnace 
when the door is opened, at times laden with storms of hot 
and penetrating sand. But the window-sashes are removed 
and a species of mats called khuskus-tatties substituted for 
them ; through which, kept constantly damped by water 
thrown over them by the bibisti, or water-carrier, from his 
pig-skin, the air blows into the house cool and fresh. When 
rains succeed, for a brief interval, the air is deliciously 
eool and fragrant. The parched vegetation springs up to 
luxuriance in a single night ; but myriads of reptiles and 
insects likewise rejoice in the change. Black ants half an 
inch long, with curly tails, overrun the bath-room ; another 
species of ants take wing and, in numbers, terminate a 
short existence by immolating themselves in the candles or 
soup at dinner. Centipedes drop from the roof of the 
veranda, snakes make morning calls, and nature generally 
awakes to diverse existence, in which the Briton appears in 
the light of an intruder into a domain the inhabitants of 
which exhibit their animosity by tickling him in the shape 
of flies, stinging him as mosquitoes, and alarming him as 
venomous reptiles. 
A lady in England would probably make strenuous objec- 
tions to the presence of little green lizards and bloated 
spiders, with hairy legs, on the walls of' her drawing-room ; 
but in India, their society is welcomed for the havoc they 
commit among the mosquitoes and flies. The almost im- 
perceptible white ants, as is, of course, well known, will eat 
anything, from boots to lath and plaster ; and in an old 
bungalow inhabited by the writer of this article, they ac- 
tually excavated their way up a door-post to the height of 
about six feet, and then cut through the woodwork and con- 
structed a kind of hanging-palace of earth, some three 
inches in length, and one in thickness, in which they de- 
posited their king and queen, two fat white grubs, of half 
an inch in length. Then there is the notorious musk rat, 
which, by simply running over a securely corked and sealing- 
waxed bottle of wine, can impart to it such a disgusting 
flavour of musk as to ruin it entirely. Add to all this insect 
and vermin life, the packs of ill-bred and mangy curs which 
infest the villages, and the multitudes of hawks, vultures, 
and carrion birds of divers kind, which swarm in the neigh- 
bourhood of the abodes of men, and kindly supply the 
want of drainage, and it may be conceived that nature in 
India is exceedingly animated. To the hot winds succeed 
long months during which the air is so stagnant that it 
seems scarcely possible to breathe, unless it is put in motion 
by the punkah swaying from the ceiling ; when even an 
ordinary sheet is too heavy a covering as slumber is courted 
at night, and loose trousers and shirt of the lightest muslin 
have to be worn instead. But at length the cool weather 
comes, when with a puggeree, or cloth bound like a turban 
round the wideawake hat, the sunbeams can be endured, 
and Anglo-India arises from summer torpor to balls, races, 
theatricals, and dinner parties. Then may the traveller 
betake himself to view those grand old. edifices, which 
Moguls and Rajahs have left to attest their magnificence ; 
and cities such as Benares, Delhi, and Lahore, where palaces 
and temples for the living and shrines for the dead vie with 
one another in costliness and beauty. 
The scenes of Bible history will be vividly brought to 
his recollection as he journeys through the country. The 
rude agricultural implements, the yokes of oxen, the wells 
from which water is drawn in leathern buckets by the hand 
(pumps as well as drains being unknown luxuries in India), 
the women on the housetops, the process of two women 
grinding at the mill, which may be constantly observed in 
all parts of India, and numerous other customs, are won- 
derfully suggestive of those pictures with which we have 
been familiar from childhood, but which appear to be drawn 
from life so foreign to our own habits. Much of the scenery 
is extremely picturesque. Sometimes the road traverses 
richly- wooded tracts almost resembling English parks : then 
it crosses vast plains, covered with the white rice-harvest or 
fields of corn, sugar-canes, or tobacco, relieved by villages 
embowered in groves of palm-trees. Here the men may be 
seen smoking their hubblebubbles, or rude hookahs, as they 
loll lazily upon their couches at the doors of their mud 
huts, or perform their ablutions by throwing water over their 
swarthy carcasses from brass pots, while their little naked 
children tumble about in the dust of the road, or stare at 
the stranger with their great, bright, black eyes. Then, 
perhaps, we enter the shades .of some gloomy forest, whose 
impenetrable depths harbour tigers, wild boars, jackals, 
porcupines, monkeys, and various species of deadly serpents, 
and, again emerging upon open plains, come to the banks 
of the sacred Ganges, or some tributary stream, where the 
alligators lie basking in the sun on the yellow sand-banks, 
and in which to bathe when living, or to be cast when dead, 
is the most important article of the religious practice of 
millions. But the old method of travelling through the 
country by dak gharrie, or one-horse post-chaise, is becoming 
as much an affair of the past as the stage-coaches and post- 
chaises of England. The dak bungalows, too, or resting- 
places erected by Government to supply the place of inns, 
will probably fall into more desuetude than our own old 
post-houses ; for the last can still carry on an impoverished 
existence by the aid of market-days and commercial travel- 
ling. The railways that now run throughout the length and 
breadth of British India will convey the traveller, reclining 
too luxuriously to take more than the most fleeting glances 
at the panorama of varied scenery he is so rapidly passing, 
from one salient point to another. In fact, we believe that 
tourists will soon be found to scamper through the more 
strikingly interesting cities of Hindostan, as through those 
of the Continent, doing the lions thereof with similar ardour, 
and contenting themselves with such views of the rest of the 
country as can bo obtained from the window of a first-class 
railway carriage, when they are not absorbed in a newspaper 
or book. Now enjoying fresh sensations, now bewailing 
novel miseries, they will hurry from the holy Benares with 
its golden temple and celebrated ghauts, or landing-places, on 
the banks of the Ganges, thronged by their bathing, praying, 
sleeping, or gossiping crowds, to Cawnpore, with its marble 
monument over the well of terrible memories ; from Agra, 
with its gem-bedizened Taj Mahal, to Delhi, with its sub- 
lime ruins and present grandeur ; from Lahore, with its 
“ mausoleums and shrines, magnificent and numberless, 
